Outreach activities of the Institute of Integrative Biology and the School of Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool

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Tag Archives: Joan Comenge

“Meet the Scientists” is a regular programme of events that takes place at the World Museum Liverpool and organised by the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Health and Life Science with the support of the Wellcome Trust. On Saturday 26th November the event drew again a large turnout of visitors. The overall theme was “Marvellous Medicines”. It focused on where our medicines come from, the different methods we use to treat diseases as well as the future of modern medicine. The day involved research teams from across the University of Liverpool lending their time and resources to run eight interactive stalls aimed at ensuring a fun and informative day for the whole family, regardless of age.

Golden? The beautiful colours of gold nanospheres and nanorods in water. The infrared absorption of some of these nanomaterials can be used to image cells in tissues.

The stem cells and nanoparticles stall attempted to translate the ongoing UK Regenerative Medicine Platform work into interactive games to help understand just how small nanoparticles are, as well as showing where stem cells are found within our body and the possible contributions they may be able to have to modern medical science.

A “pin the organ on the human” game was also run, involving visitors placing organ cutouts onto an outline of a human they drew onto a whiteboard, hopefully in the correct place. This game helped to show where exactly our organs are located, and how they each hold stem cells vital to our ongoing health and regeneration. (The freely available resources developed by Eurostemcells are available here if you wish to try this yourself.) In total, 7 people help run the activity throughout the day: Sumaira Ashraf, Joe Robertson, Elizabeth Grimes, Joan Comenge, Rorie Hather, Angela Midgley and Raphaël Lévy

Dr. Madine’s group used a highly popular tactic among many of the younger visitors. Their game, invented by Kieran Hand and James Torpey, involved using Lego pieces to demonstrate how small molecules can dock to target proteins implicated in the diseases they research. Children were sent on a scavenger hunt around the different stalls to find the hidden complementary shape of Lego that would fit to their existing protein. On their stall, PhD student Kieran Hand said one of their aims was to raise awareness of light chain amyloidosis – a disease that is often left out of the limelight, yet impacts a similar number of people as motor neurone disease. The prizes that had been assembled to give to children who were successful in the drug discovery hunt ran out by 2 pm, showing just how busy the event was. Hammed Badmos also helped on the stall during the day.

The Meet the Scientists series continues into the new year, with the next event, “Brainiacs”, taking place on the 21st January 2017. It will explore the complexities, faults and cures that surround the human brain.

Nuffield Research Placements (previously Nuffield Science Bursaries) provide over 1,000 students each year with the opportunity to work alongside professional scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. Raphael Levy’s group has hosted students last summer and this summer.

Last year we hosted Katie and Liam; this year we hosted Yasmin and Jack. You can find out more about what they did in the lab by looking at the Storify of their tweets: